Leia winced, and Han felt like drawing his blaster. That cutting voice was distinctive, instantly recognizable. It was Thrackan Han also felt a little foolish. Of course the Corellian Chief of State would have a viewing chamber near the Five World Prime Minister’s; of course Thrackan would be here to observe this meeting.
Han glanced to the left, toward the source of Thrackan’s voice. On the other side of a thin wall was a man who’d given him grief across decades. He whispered, “It’s sort of like being a kid again. Hiding in your bed because there’s a monster in the closet.”
Despite herself, Leia grinned.
Han mimed drawing his blaster and aiming it at the wall to his left. He wondered how many shots it would take for him to hit Thrackan under these circumstances, and whether he and Leia could get out of the building afterward.
It was probably not wise to try. Not this time. He sighed and mimed reholstering his weapon.
Wedge turned to face Sal-Solo’s viewport, meaning he was staring almost directly up into Han and Leia’s, as well. “No, sir,” he said. “As I’m sure your protocol droid is now telling you, my use of the word wanton referred to the unnecessary deaths of so many of our kinfolk and fellow citizens. And there’s the additional factor that, while this group might be able to maintain for years the terrible secret that we were responsible for those deaths, we wouldn’t be able to keep it forever. Secrets, like hydraulic fluids, have a nasty habit of seeping out into the open just when it’s worst for everybody.”
Sal-Solo’s voice boomed again: “Was that a threat, Antilles?”
Wedge made a dismissive gesture Han knew would have to outrage Sal-Solo. “No, it was a realistic appraisal. And my realistic appraisal of Operation Noble Savage suggests to me that it would be effective, in that it would probably succeed … but that it would not be efficient. To be efficient, it would have to accomplish our goals with minimal loss of civilian life, and with a chance to reduce, instead of increase, our chance to enter a full-scale shooting war.”
“And can you do all that, General? And put a shine on your reputation while you’re at it?”
“I can. And put a shine on your reputation. Since you’re the military commander in chief approving an operation that might not rid the system of scores of thousands of loyal Corellians.”
Han saw Leia holding her breath. Wedge was playing a tricky game here-appealing to Sal-Solo’s political instincts of self-preservation, but still batting the man’s words back into his teeth. Perhaps Wedge was getting too tired to keep his politics soft-spoken and pleasing. Perhaps, like Han, he hated Sal-Solo so much that he simply couldn’t bear to accommodate the man.
“Let’s hear it,” Sal-Solo said. “If I like what I hear, you might not find yourself begging on a street corner come morning.”
Wedge turned his back on the man’s booth. From a breast pocket he removed a datapad. Looking around, he apparently spotted the room’s hologram input sensor; he pointed the datapad at it, and abruptly the hologram image overhead changed.
Once again it was the center of Rellidir, but a less realistic plotting of it; the spacescrapers were all simple gray rectangles, their windows, balconies, and decorations not represented. A moment after the hologram resolved into crisp detail, dome-like translucences in pink appeared to show the two sets of shields maintained by the Galactic Alliance occupiers.
“Same problem, different solution,” Wedge said. On the hologram, two flights of green blips-six blips per flight, two half squadrons-appeared at the edges of the displayed region, the first from one angle, and the second from an angle ninety degrees to that of the first. The first flight overflew the shield-protected region; a moment later, the second flight followed suit. Now red dots appeared on the display, in numbers rapidly swelling from twenty to a hundred, and formed up to follow the green dots. Both the pursued and the pursuers exited the scene within moments.
“Stage One,” Wedge continued, “is a diversionary bombing run on the shields, standard operational procedure to overload shields and bring them down. Given that the GA occupiers have not only installed military power generators at the site but also commandeered city power generators and can feed them straight into their shields, the shields possess a lot of power. This run will and the bombers will make a quick bounce up to orbit, drawing off a certain amount of pursuit.”
Wedge tapped another button on his datapad. Just barely within the outer perimeter of the shields, a massive gray building began to blink in color, alternating between green and yellow. “This is the Terkury Housing Complex, currently under construction, being built on the site of an old complex that had to be deconstructed for safety reasons. The new complex will be somewhat more upscale than many of the surrounding housing units, providing modern amenities and a broad underground hangar area for private skimmers, shuttles, and the like.”